Event summary

Joana Garcia is an Economist at Banco of Portugal – Economics and Research Department. She is a PhD student and researcher of NIPE since 2021. Her thesis is advised by Fernando Alexandre (NIPE) and João Amador (Nova SBE and Banco Portugal). Her research interests are in the area of Macroeconomics.

Abstract
Despite the widespread concern that multinationals may pervasively shift profits to low-tax locations through services trade between firms of the same group, systematic evidence of this practice remains scarce. Using data covering the universe of multinational groups with presence in Portugal and their services trade with tax havens, we provide robust evidence that those groups do not have an excess propensity to trade intra-group with havens, once we control for a possible genuine specialization of havens in services trade. Instead, our results indicate that multinationals systematically avoid intra-group services transactions with havens, and that Portuguese policies may be driving such negative propensity. Nevertheless, we document the existence of an excessive value of intra-group imports from specific havens for a subset of multinational groups, pointing to possible profit shifting practices concentrated on a few groups and in transactions with a few havens.

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Looking forward to your attendance.